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Hold Everything Dear

Dispatches on Survival and Resistance
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Brief Description
From the War on Terror to resistance in Ramallah and traumatic dislocation in the Middle East, Berger explores the uses of art as an instrument of political resistance. Visceral and passionate, Hold Everything Dear is a profound meditation on the far extremes of human behaviour, and... Read More
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A powerful meditation on political resistance from one of the most original and influential thinkers of our times

A powerful meditation on political resistance from one of the most original and influential thinkers of our times

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

From the War on Terror to resistance in Ramallah and traumatic dislocation in the Middle East, Berger explores the uses of art as an instrument of political resistance.

Visceral and passionate, Hold Everything Dear is a profound meditation on the far extremes of human behaviour, and the underlying despair. Looking at Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq, he makes an impassioned attack on the poverty and loss of freedom at the heart of such unnecessary suffering.

These essays offer reflections on the political at the core of artistic expression and even at the centre of human existence itself.

Series: The Essential John Berger

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  • Hold Everything Dear
    From the War on Terror to resistance in Ramallah and traumatic dislocation in the Middle East, Berger explores the uses of art as an instrument of political resistance. Visceral and passionate, Hold Everything Dear is a profound meditation on the far extremes of human behaviour, and the underlying despair. Looking at Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq, he makes an impassioned attack...
    Paperback
    $3699
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Pre-order
    Corker's Freedom
    John Berger brings us this tender and bittersweet novel, Corker's Freedom. It is a book of dreams of freedom and romance, dreams that intoxicate and redeem, dreams that have the power to exalt their dreamers or dash them against hard truth. It is the unforgettable, often comical portrait of a dreamer, one William Corker, the genteel proprietor of a London...
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  • The Moment of Cubism
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    The Moment of Cubism
    John Berger is one of the most passionate and incisive writers on the relationship between art and politics. Whether looking at Vermeer in his studio, or Poussin's poignant meditation on death, the contradictions of Rodin's sculpture, Berger was always able to see the threads that bound the individual life, their passion for creativity and the social and political contexts they...
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  • Landscapes
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    Landscapes
    In this brilliant collection of diverse worksโ€”essays, short stories, poems, translationsโ€”which spans a lifetimeโ€™s engagement with art, John Berger reveals how he came to his own unique way of seeing. He challenges readers to rethink their every assumption about the role of creativity in our lives. Paying homage to the writers and thinkers who influenced him, he pushes at the...
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  • Bento's Sketchbook
    The seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinozaโ€”also known as Benedict or Bento de Spinozaโ€”spent the most intense years of his short life writing. He also carried with him a sketchbook. After his sudden death, his friends rescued letters, manuscripts, notesโ€”but no drawings. For years, without knowing what its pages might hold, John Berger has imagined finding Bentoโ€™s sketchbook, wanting to see the...
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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781804298251

Publisher: Verso Books

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 25 March 2025

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Verso Books

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 10.0mm

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 134g

Pages: 160

About the Author

Storyteller, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, dramatist and critic, John Berger is one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years. His many books include Ways of Seeing, the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours, Here Is Where We Meet, the Booker Prize-winning novel G, Hold Everything Dear, the Man Bookerโ€“longlisted From A to X, and A Seventh Man.

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    Based on the groundbreaking BBC television series, Ways of Seeing by John Berger is an innovative and compelling examination of how we perceive visual art. Published as part of the celebrated Penguin on Design series in Penguin Modern Classics, this book delves into the intricate relationships between art, society, and individuals. The opening premise, "Seeing comes before words. The child...
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    Confabulations is a profound exploration of language and its intrinsic ties to the human experience. Renowned writer and critic John Berger invites readers into a rich tapestry where language, thought, art, music, storytelling, and political discourse intertwine. Berger, whose work has significantly shaped our understanding of visual language, now turns his reflective eye to the fabric of language itself. Within...
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  • Portraits
    Portraits by John Berger is an intricate and personal history of art that spans from the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet caves to the revolutionary conceptual artists of the 21st century. Offering an unparalleled journey through the epochs of visual culture, Berger masterfully stitches together a narrative that intertwines the evolution of artistic expression with the socio-political contexts that shaped...
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    We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks. In this series of remarkable pieces from across his career, John Berger celebrates and dissects the close links between art and society and the individual. Few writers give a more vivid and moving sense of how we make art and how art makes us. GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some...
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  • Understanding a Photograph
    A selection of John Berger's writings on photography, including incredible images, edited & selected by Geoff Dyer. John Berger's writings on photography are some of the most original of the twentieth century. This selection contains many groundbreaking essays and previously uncollected pieces written for exhibitions and catalogues, in which Berger probes the work of photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and...
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  • From A to X
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  • A Fortunate Man
    In 1966, John Berger spent three months in the Forest of Dean shadowing an English country GP, John Sassall. Sassall is a fortunate manโ€”his work occupies and fulfils him, he lives amongst the patients he treats, and the line between his life and his work is happily blurred. In A Fortunate Man, Berger's text and the photography of Jean Mohr...
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  • Goya's Last Portrait/A Question of Geography
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    Goyaโ€™s Last Portrait presents the artist struggling to comprehend the relationship between his life and his work. Having painted humanity at its most violent and depraved amid the horrors of war, and also depicted the vibrancy of aristocratic life, Goya faces an overwhelming question: Has he changed the world or merely caught its reflection? The Question of Geography is set...
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